Dear Mister Everly
An advice column from a bewildered civics instructor who's clearly at the end of his rope.
📬 Dear Mister Everly: Questions on Citizenship, Sanity, and Other Vanishing Arts
By L.H. Everly, Civic Instructor (Retired, Disillusioned)
Dear Mister Everly,
My nephew told me the Federal Reserve isn’t real. He said money is fake, reality is programmable, and that “none of this matters because lizard billionaires already won.” Should I be worried, or is this just how kids talk now?
—Concerned in Topeka
Dear Concerned,
Worried? No. Terrified? Absolutely.
If your nephew believes currency is a hallucination and the ruling class is scaled and cold-blooded, he is not simply “expressing himself”—he is losing his grip on the agreed-upon fiction we call reality. The fact that he’s still using money to buy energy drinks suggests he hasn’t fully disconnected. That’s good.
Try reintroducing him to tangible institutions: public libraries, municipal water, a W-2 form. These will confuse him, possibly anger him. Stay calm. Offer him a crisp dollar bill and ask him to explain its uselessness as he tries to buy a burger. Repeat until grounding occurs.
Dear Mister Everly,
How do I talk to someone who says, “I don’t believe in experts”?
—Wits’ End, Akron
Dear End,
You don’t. You listen. Then you nod. Then you slowly put down your coffee and walk away before your frontal lobe explodes.
You see, someone who “doesn’t believe in experts” is not a thinker. They are a hobbyist skeptic with no brakes. This is a person who will reject doctors, engineers, historians, and meteorologists, but trust a man with no shirt and four thousand followers on Rumble because he “seems real.”
Your best option is to ask them, very politely, if they would prefer to fly on a plane designed by a vibes-based influencer. If they hesitate—there’s hope. If they say “Yes, because planes are part of the hoax,” I recommend setting down all sharp objects and retreating behind something factual, like a wall or a dictionary.
Dear Mister Everly,
Why do people now say “I feel like...” instead of “I think...” even when discussing factual matters?
—Syntax-Driven in Seattle
Dear Syntax,
Because “I feel like” is the linguistic equivalent of bubble wrap—it cushions the speaker from the possibility of being wrong. When someone says, “I feel like the moon landing was staged,” they are not making a claim, they are smuggling nonsense under the flag of emotion.
You may gently correct them: “That’s interesting. I feel like you’re incorrect, but I think we can verify it.” This rarely helps, but it does preserve your own dignity.
Dear Mister Everly,
How do I get someone to stop talking when they’re confidently wrong?
—Exhausted in Milwaukee
Dear Exhausted,
Try this phrase: “I’m sorry, what you just said makes me dumber.”
If that’s too aggressive, try holding up your hand like a crossing guard and saying, “Just—stop. For both our sakes.”
If they persist, hand them a blank sheet of paper and ask them to write down what they just said with sources. Most cannot. If they can, it will involve a URL with thirteen dashes, three typos, and a foreign domain extension.
At that point, nod gravely and excuse yourself to tend to anything at all. Your lawn. Your taxes. Your silent, aching sanity.
Closing Thought:
Civic life is not built on knowing everything. It’s built on knowing you don’t. If we could convince even half the population to say “I’m not sure, let me check” instead of “Let me tell you what’s really going on,” we might have a republic again.
Until then, I remain
Bewildered but breathing,
—L.H. Everly
📬 Dear Mister Everly: "It’s a Free Country and Other Misunderstood Phrases"
By L.H. Everly, Former High School Civics Teacher, Current Brick Wall Screamer
Dear Mister Everly,
I told this guy the Earth is flat, and he said I was a moron. I told him I have a right to my opinion. He said I have a right to remain silent. Doesn’t the First Amendment protect me from being insulted?
—Feeling Violated in Flagstaff
Dear Violated,
Ah yes. The sacred First Amendment: beloved, misunderstood, and beaten over the head with a folding chair in every Facebook comment thread since 2009.
Let’s be clear. The First Amendment protects you from government censorship, not from being disagreed with by people who have functional brains. You have the right to speak. Others have the right to tell you that what you said is deeply stupid.
This is what we call “freedom.”
Now, let’s address the core of your grievance: you shouted into the void “The Earth is flat,” and the void replied, “Sir, please stop yelling at the Arby’s drive-thru microphone.” You then claimed persecution.
You were not persecuted. You were contradicted.
Being wrong and being silenced are not the same thing. One is a momentary discomfort. The other is a government-imposed restriction. If someone disagrees with your nonsense and calls you a walnut-brained attention tourist, that’s not tyranny—that’s Tuesday.
Furthermore, let’s not pretend your “opinion” is neutral. You are not claiming that you prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla. You are claiming that every scientist, astronaut, satellite engineer, and airline pilot in the world is part of a round-Earth conspiracy, and that you, a man with a Galaxy Note 8 and access to YouTube, have pierced the veil of lies.
Friend, that’s not an opinion. That’s a self-inflicted reality collapse, and the Constitution does not grant you protection from ridicule when you broadcast it in all caps.
If you’d like to exercise your First Amendment rights responsibly, I suggest the following:
Say things you believe.
Accept that others will say things back.
Refrain from demanding that their disagreement constitutes a human rights violation.
If this still feels unfair, I encourage you to draft a strongly worded letter to the Founding Fathers and drop it off the edge of the Earth.
Respectfully,
—L.H. Everly
Civics Instructor, Former Believer in Public Discourse
